POSTED March 8, 2016

On Monday, staff members noticed possible bullet holes in the windows and window frames of the Schwules Museum*—an institution devoted to communicating the history and culture of LGBT communities—in Berlin, the Berliner Zeitung reports.

The police confirmed that projectiles were found on the ground by the entrance to the museum, but the type of gun the assailants used is still unknown. The police speculate that the weapon may have been an air rifle. Officials from the police department for state security are in charge of the investigation and are looking into whether this crime was motivated by homophobia.

In a statement, the museum confirmed that its staff members are worried.
“Most of the people working at the museum are volunteers who are here because they enjoy being in a safe environment where they are accepted for who and what they are.”

Founded in 1985, the museum, which celebrated its thirtieth anniversary last year, has been at its current location since 2013.

September 26, 2017

The Italian art collector Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo is opening a foundation in Madrid, reports Anny Shaw of the Art Newspaper. The new space, which will be about 68,000 square feet, is scheduled to open in 2019, and is being designed by the Ghanian British architect David Adjaye and the Spanish architect Arturo Franco. The foundation, a third addition to the two other spaces the collector has in Italy, will primarily be used to showcase her vast, 1,000-piece-strong collection.

The building that the foundation will be housed in is being leased to Sandretto Re Rebaudengo for fifty years by the city of Madrid. In exchange, the collector will offer up one hundred works from her holdings for long-term loan to the city. The foundation will offer residencies to curators so that they may organize exhibitions of Spanish artists, among other types of programs. Madrid’s mayor, Manuela Carmena Castrillo, described the arrival of the foundation as being akin to a branch of the Guggenheim landing in Bilbao. “Everybody has the right to enjoy art. That's why we have to open our doors to collectors,” said Castrillo.

September 26, 2017

Markus Lüpertz’s sculpture Uranus in front of the Taimiao Temple in Beijing for “Deutschland 8: German Art in China.”

“Deutschland 8: German Art in China,” a sister exhibition to “China 8,” a 2015 showcase of contemporary Chinese art that was exhibited across nine museums in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, has now opened in seven venues throughout Beijing. This cross-cultural exchange, however, has encountered dissent: On September 17, six of the fifty-five artists in the show—Rosemarie Trockel, Antje Ehmann, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Julian Rosefeldt, Marcel Odenbach, Hito Steyerl, and the estate of Harun Farocki—wrote a letter to Walter Smerling, one of the show’s curators, protesting the exhibition’s sponsorship by Rheinmetall, a German arms manufacturer. They are concerned that their work is being implemented to “[enhance] the image of such corporations,” writes Alice Dingle of Art Asia Pacific.

The artists claim that several of Rheinmetall’s branches produce arms that have been purchased by armies “deployed in actual war zones such as Yemen.” They also allege that the company’s subsidiaries have built weapons factories in war-torn areas.

Bonn’s Foundation for Art and Culture, which organized the exhibition with Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, is planning on hosting a public debate to discuss Rheinmetall’s support of the show. A date for the event has yet to be announced.

September 26, 2017

Joan Jonas’s contribution to the Artists Against the Immigration Ban project.

Artists Danh Vo, Chitra Ganesh, Anicka Yi, Julie Mehretu, Liam Gillick, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Walid Raad, Joan Jonas, and Barbara Kruger have come together for Artists Against the Immigration Ban, a project organized by art historians Bettina Funcke and Amy Zion, writes Sarah Cascone of Artnet. Each artist has created a poster in protest of Trump’s travel ban, which as of September 24, was revised to include Chad and North Korea. Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen are still on the list. Iraq and Sudan were dropped, though Iraqi citizens will be “subject to additional scrutiny.” Venezuelan government officials and their families are also not allowed into the US under the new order.

The project started in February after Funcke and Zion posted an online letter opposing Trump’s original travel restrictions, which were issued in January. Their missive received a lot of attention, so the women reached out to artists and asked if “they’d put the letter in their own words, if they’d rewrite it, or redesign it,” according to a representative for the project. The posters have been mailed to at least thirty museums throughout the United States. Every package sent out came with a message asking the recipients to make their own decisions as to what should be done with the posters. “Artists don’t normally send stuff to museums out of the blue. If these get accepted into collections, it means that there’s a record of this time that’s very different from a protest or an exhibition,” said the project rep. The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Art Institute of Chicago, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston are some of the institutions that have received posters.

“Nothing that Trump and his lackeys do should come as a surprise. When I hear people say they’re ‘shocked’ at whatever the latest episode of this manipulative and grotesquely tragic con is, it just makes my head spin. It’s that very lack of imagination that helped enable this takeover of resolute ignorance and raging white grievance,” said Barbara Kruger.

The controversial piece, which was the initial focus of the public outcry, Dogs That Cannot Touch Each Other, 2003, consists of a seven-minute video clip of a performance in which eight American Pitbulls aggressively charge each other while on treadmills at a museum in Beijing in 2003. Even though the dogs are not able to touch one another, activists are arguing that the work is an example of animal cruelty, which has no place in art.

The other two works include A Case Study of Transference, 1994, a video of two pigs with several markings, including Chinese characters, that have been stamped on their bodies having sex while on exhibit, and Theater of the World, 1993, which was intended to be the show’s signature piece. The work would have featured hundreds of insects and reptiles in an enclosed octagonal space. Over the course of the exhibition, the creatures would prey on and eat each other.

In response to the aforementioned works, critics launched an online petition, which was signed by more than half a million people by Monday, September 25. Demonstrators demanding “cruelty-free” exhibits also set up outside the museum over the weekend. According to the Guggenheim, it ultimately decided not to show the pieces “out of concern for the safety of its staff, visitors and participating artists.”

“Although these works have been exhibited in museums in Asia, Europe, and the United States, the Guggenheim regrets that explicit and repeated threats of violence have made our decision necessary,” the museum said in a statement. “As an arts institution committed to presenting a multiplicity of voices, we are dismayed that we must withhold works of art. Freedom of expression has always been and will remain a paramount value of the Guggenheim.”

Billed as a “major exhibition of contemporary art from China spanning 1989 to 2008” and as “arguably the most transformative period of modern Chinese and recent world history,” the show includes contributions by more than seventy artists and around 150 experimental artworks that focus on the geopolitical dynamics at the end of the Cold War, the spread of globalization, and the rise of China. According to the museum’s website, it is “the largest show of this subject ever mounted in North America.”

September 26, 2017

Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program in New York in 2015. Photo: Judy Cai

The New York Foundation for the Arts has announced that it was awarded a two-year grant from the Ford Foundation in support of the expansion of its Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program. The initiative will now connect 144 immigrant artists with mentors and strengthen immigrant artist communities in the cities of Detroit; Newark; Oakland, California; and San Antonio by using the NYFA’s program in New York as a model.

“At a time of crisis and uncertainty for immigrant families and children, artists can be powerful leaders for social change,” said Margaret Morton, one of the foundation’s program officers. “The Ford Foundation is proud to support the expansion of the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program to embrace artists and amplify their voices.”

Established nearly ten years ago by NYFA executive director Michael L. Royce, the Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program has provided close to two hundred New York City–based immigrants with mentorship, community, and exposure for their work. The New York program has been funded by the Deutsche Bank since 2007.

Newark’s program is accepting applications from now until October 30, with a start date of December 9. The New Jersey Performing Arts Center will be the lead partner organization and will provide guidance on the Newark arts landscape as well as access to mentors and artist opportunities, among other resources. The NYFA is currently having conversations with potential partners in the other three cities and will announce those details at a later date.

September 26, 2017

Marko Daniel has been named the new director of the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, Spain, reports Vanessa Graell for El Mundo. Citing Daniel’s knowledge of the artist’s work and of Catalan, Spanish, and international art and culture, as well as his “competence in fiscal management,” the foundation’s board unanimously approved the appointment. He will take up the post in January 2018.

Daniel succeeds Rosa Maria Malet, who will retire after leading the foundation since 1980. She will continue authenticating Miró’s work at the request of the estate’s administrators, the Association pour la Défense de l’œuvre de Joan Miró, and will become a new member of the foundation’s board of trustees.

An expert in contemporary Chinese and Catalan art, Daniel had joined the Tate Modern as curator of public programs in 2006, and held this position at both Tate Modern and Tate Britain since 2011. During his tenure, Daniel cocurated the exhibition, “Joan Miró: L’escala de l’evasió” (2011–12), which also traveled to the Joan Miró Foundation and the National Gallery in Washington, DC.

September 25, 2017

The Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv announced that Nicola Trezzi has been appointed its new director and chief curator. He will take up the post at the beginning of 2018. Founding director Sergio Edelsztein will remain at the institution during the transition and then stay on as the chairman of the board.

Trezzi has been head of the MFA program at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem since 2014. Prior to that he was US editor of Flash Art International and curator at the Prague Biennale Foundation. He also co-curated exhibitions held at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, and the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, New York, among others, and was one of the cofounders of Lucie Fontaine, an artist-run space in Milan.

“After twenty years of growth, along which we grew from a tiny cultural operation to a vibrant institution leading the contemporary art scene in Israel, we find that Nicola Trezzi is the right person to take the CCA to the next stage, finding for it the right place in the international art scene and in the challenging local cultural and political reality,” Edelsztein said in a statement.

September 25, 2017

Loring Randolph has been named the Frieze art fair’s artistic director of the Americas. She will play a major role in shaping the strategic goals and content of Frieze New York. She will also act as a liaison for galleries, collectors, and curators located throughout the Americas.

Randolph comes to Frieze from the Casey Kaplan gallery in New York, where she was partner. There she cultivated the gallery’s program; maintained client, curator, and artist relationships; organized gallery exhibitions and solo exhibitions at institutions; and oversaw the production of numerous publications.

“Loring will bring dynamism and new perspectives to her role as Artistic Director (Americas), I am thrilled to welcome her to the Frieze team and I am really looking forward to working with her on Frieze New York,” said Victoria Siddall, the director of Frieze Fairs. “As a former exhibitor, Loring brings an invaluable perspective that will help us continue to improve all aspects of what we do for our exhibiting galleries, whose groundbreaking presentations are the core of the Fairs. She also brings experience and expertise in the New York art world and the Americas that will continue to grow our partnerships with galleries, museums, collectors, and artists across the region, as well as to engage with our community in the city.”

September 25, 2017

Marian Horosko, a ballet dancer and historian who danced with the Metropolitan Ballet and the New York City Ballet, died on September 11, writes Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times. She studied at the School of American Ballet and the Juilliard School. When she was at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, she was a soloist. But when she came to City Ballet she mostly performed character roles. She stopped dancing in the early 1960s, but wrote for Dance Magazine, where she was the education editor, writing articles on how dancers should take care of themselves and pieces such as “Teachers in the Russian Tradition.”

Horosko consulted and produced on dance programs for radio and television. She was also a film curator for the Lincoln Center Dance Collection. In the 1980s, she created a group called Danse Coalition, which took on the problem of disappearing rehearsal spaces in Manhattan due to exorbitant rents. She was also a cofounder of the Performing Arts Center for Health in New York, a clinic dedicated to the physical and mental well-being of practicing and retired dancers. “We want to be able to help dancers to get help, and get it right away, from doctors who won’t just tell them to ‘stay off their feet,’” she said in an interview with the New York Times in 1982. In 1987 Horosko published The Dancer’s Survival Manual: Everything You Need to Know About Being a Dancer … Except How to Dance, inspired by her work with dancers at the clinic. A second edition of the book was put out in 2009 with the new subtitle, Everything You Need to Know From the First Class to Career Change.

“Marian Horosko was compellingly sensible and humane in her writing on dance, glamorous yet pragmatic, with an encyclopedic passion for the art,” said Jennifer Dunning, a former dance critic for the New York Times. “To spend even a brief time in her company was to be charmed and fascinated by the way her mind worked and the way, after a ballet debut at twelve, she never stopped exploring dance.”